


Sharp Objects

by kirazi



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Archaeology, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Lab Bromance, Modern Westeros, Rivalry, jaime's jawline is not technically one of the sharp objects, lmao at my dumb ass for thinking this was going to be under 10k and finished on time, no relation to the television series of the same name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:53:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25830874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirazi/pseuds/kirazi
Summary: Jaime Lannister is Brienne's least favorite colleague, until he's not.“Why do you hate my guts?” he asks her, his frustration as visible as his breath in the chill night air.Because you’re rich and beautiful and gifted, she thinks. Because if anyone else had done what you did, their career would be over, but you got the mother of all second chances. Because it’s not fucking fair. Because your face looks like that, in the faded streetlamp light, and I want to touch it.Aloud, she says, “I don’t hate your guts.” That’s also the truth.(for the Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020)
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 159
Kudos: 421
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Weboury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weboury/gifts).



> For Weboury's prompt "rivalry - Jaime and Brienne are both good at what they do, and prove that to each other constantly even without meaning to. maybe they start on the wrong foot but each one is so competent they can't help admire the other, or they keep challenging each other in things they both suck at, etc." I hope you enjoy this! I tried to throw in a few of the other things you mentioned liking.
> 
> This is unbeta'd, and all mistakes (and any egregious misrepresentations of real-life research practice) are the fault of the author. In my defense, it's Modern Westeros: who knows how they do things there?
> 
> edited to add: many thanks to Roccolinde, slipsthroughfingers, nire, sameboots, brynnmck, robotsdance, angel_deux, sdwolfpup, and others for encouragement during the writing process, and especially to 1996skh for helping with some initial brainstorming about laboratory stuff! And thanks to the people who invited to tag along on a few archaeological field seasons back in the day, and thus helped inspire this story. You have my axe, and my trowel.

The axe-throwing contest is where it all starts to go wrong.

Afterwards, Brienne isn’t even sure how it happens; the usual Friday pub night with her labmates somehow escalates into a more boisterous outing—Margaery probably has something to do with it—and next thing she knows, she’s been dragged along to the new axe-throwing bar down the block from their habitual local, and how are axe-throwing bars even a thing? Aren’t sharp blades and drunkenness a deadly combination? Almost two years in and she still thinks she’ll never understand the bloody North. But her problem isn’t that she’s drunk, because she’s not; she’s big enough that it takes more than a couple of pints to set her head spinning. The blades aren’t a problem, either. She’s always had an affinity for a beautiful edge—a single dragonglass arrow point, discovered in the eastern hills of Tarth when she was nine, is largely to blame for the course of her professional life—and she’s a natural athlete, so it hadn’t taken her more than a few practice throws to get the hang of it. No, her problem is that after an hour, she and Lannister are the only ones left standing, and he’s peeled off his plaid flannel button-down to expose a white t-shirt that fits his shoulders just so, revealing the way all the muscles in his arm bunch and flex as he sends another axe sailing into the center of the target with an emphatic thunk. _Fuck._

“Your turn, Tarth,” he says, with that smile—sharp as the arrow’s edge—that makes her think he’s just spoiling for a fight. Brienne takes a deep breath and sets down her pint—she’s been sipping carefully, because unlike the rest of her lunatic colleagues she doesn’t think any of this is a particularly good idea—and steps forward to the end of the plywood throwing cage, picking up the last axe from the basket, turning to face the side-by-side targets at the far end. She tests the grip and the heft, swinging it a little as she widens her feet, readies her stance. She can feel his eyes on her, coolly assessing, and for a moment she regrets taking off her heavy wool sweater a couple of rounds back—there’s nothing but a tank top and sports bra guarding her from that uncomfortably intent gaze. She forces herself not to glance down to check whether her nipples are visible through the cloth. Tension hums through her body.

Focus on the target, she tells herself. Win, and this will be over. The angles come together and her arm comes up and it’s almost like magic, the ringing certainty she feels when she aims and swings and releases at just the right moment. She knows it’s going in the bullseye before it lands.

Margaery’s shriek of delight drowns out the rest of the applause, and Brienne hides her blush in her pint glass, focusing on the rich flavor of the ale while the genial, dark-haired kid who works there—the axe-tender?—there collects the weapons from the targets, before darting another glance at Lannister. He’s still looking at the target, but there’s a wry little smile at the corner of his mouth, and something in her gut twists at the sight of it.

“Another round?” the axe-tender asks, returning with the basket. “You win a free pint if you hit the bullseye third time in a row.”

Brienne shakes her head. Another drink isn’t what she needs right now. “I should really get going,” she says, apologetically, only to be greeted with a chorus of disappointed groans.

“Come on,” Theon whines, and she remembers why she doesn’t like him. “You two aren’t going to let this in end in a tie, are you?” Brienne opens her mouth to say something that will probably come out ruder than she means it to, but it’s too late anyway, because Margaery has already caught the eye of the kid and summoned him to her.

“We’ll take it,” she says, forking over a couple of silver stags and collecting the basket in exchange. “But we’ll need to sway Brienne with something more appealing than a free drink.” Her ice-blue eyes are sparkling with mischief, and Brienne can see why men find this appealing, even if—regretfully, according to Marg—it doesn’t particularly work on her. Margaery turns to Lannister, who’s eyeing them both with thinly veiled amusement, and Brienne’s stomach sinks.

She doesn’t like Jaime Lannister. But she’s at least comfortable, or something like it, with their established rivalry in the lab. She’d resented him from the moment he arrived at the Winterfell Research Institute, a year after she’d started her postdoc there—it’s almost insufferable, the way he’s managed to effortlessly assume the role of the WRI’s golden boy despite his dark history. She can admit, because she is nothing if not fair-minded, that he’s an excellent scientist, when he’s not busy being an arrogant shit. His background in analytical chemistry is an invaluable asset to their archaeometry lab; Catelyn had been right to hire him. Even if he did blow up his doctoral advisor’s laboratory and slink away to work in industry for the better part of a decade. She supposes it’s easier to achieve that kind of soft landing when your daddy owns the biggest pharmaceutical company in Westeros. She has no idea why he’d given that up to come work at a tiny interdisciplinary research center in the freezing North, although honor compels her to admit he’s earned his keep in the position so far.

But that doesn’t mean she has to like it. That doesn’t mean she’s over the fact that he’d beat her out for the Karstark Award this year, or that she thinks his caustic sense of humor improves her work atmosphere, or that she’s obligated to swoon over his pretty face like most of the women—and a good portion of the men, too—in Winterfell seem to do. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel herself prickling with annoyance at the roguish energy crackling between him and Margaery right now, even if she knows it’s just harmless teasing on Marg’s end. Nothing about Jaime Lannister strikes her as harmless.

“All right,” he says, in a slow drawl, and the hair on her arms stands up, like she’s suddenly face-to-face with some rare and dangerous animal, something with the type of beauty that mesmerizes you until it’s too late to see the teeth and claws. “How about this, Tarth. Beat me, and I’ll spend a whole week dating every artifact you can throw at me. And if I win, you help me draft my proposal for the Highgarden Grant. Can’t ask Marg to help out; that would be nepotism, what with her esteemed grandmamma on the committee.”

Brienne feels her jaw go tight. She’s considered requesting his assistance with isotope analysis a number of times—since Gilly’s departure for the doctoral program at the Citadel, there’s no one else at the lab who’s as good with the equipment—but she hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of asking him for help. If she won it, though, fair and square? What he’s offering could set her current research project ahead by a month, if not more. Which leaves her a little suspicious as to his reasons for making the offer in the first place. Why on earth would he want her help? He gets on well enough with most of the WRI staff, not just Margaery, and in any case she can’t imagine where this sudden objection to nepotism is coming from, from him of all people. But her own proposal for the Highgarden is at the final draft stage already, and she supposes she could spare the time to give him some feedback if she loses. Which she has no intention of doing.

“Fine,” she concedes, and gestures at the basket of axes. “You first.”

She steps further back, out from the taped safety perimeter on the floor. A round is three throws apiece, and a few minutes later, there are four axes in the targets: one in the center and one in the outer circle on his, and the reverse on hers.

Lannister steps forward again, squaring his shoulders, and she’s momentarily distracted by an intrusive thought about how much he deadlifts, and if the number is higher than hers. She’s been slacking off in the gym of late. The rippled scars on his right hand catch the light as he hefts it up, and then the axe goes cartwheeling through the air and buries itself in the innermost painted ring—but on the edge, not in the bullseye.

Lannister makes an odd little bow to her as he steps back to clear the space as she comes forward to pick up her final axe. She closes her eyes for a second. A whole week of assistance, she tells herself. She’ll have to put up with his presence, of course, but she’ll have the data she needs. An odd calm settles over her body, and Brienne takes a deep breath, and throws. The blade sinks deep into the wood, angled sideways, an inch left of the other two, dead center.

The room erupts in whoops and cheers, and Brienne feels giddy for a moment. She’s pleased by her victory; something about this man brings out the stubborn, competitive streak she thought she’d left on Tarth. Now she just has to claim her prize.

She turns to look at Lannister, and is surprised to see him lifting a pint glass, smiling with teeth.

“Well played,” he says, toasting her. “I yield.” She feels herself flush at the words, her exposed chest going blotchy with the rush of heat as he takes a long drink from his pint, the workings of his throat all too visible under the close-cropped beard.

“Um. Thanks,” she says, the words sounding dull and foolish in her mouth. She looks for her own half-finished pint, the glass cool against her sweat-damp palms, and she's grateful for the momentary pause offered by the sip she takes, more slowly then necessary.

“I’ll need a couple of days to tie up what I’m working on now,” he adds. “Would next Wednesday work as a start time for you?”

“Sure,” she tells him. “That would be fine. Thanks.” For a moment he seems like he’s about to say something else, but then he just shrugs and nods, draining his glass and heading back in the direction of the bar.

Brienne exhales, and escapes to the loo to piss and splash some cold water on her still-heated skin. Seven Hells, she thinks, looking at her splotchy reflection in the equally splotchy mirror. This is going to be the most awkward research collab since she’d had to finish out a semester alongside her shitty ex and his even shittier buddies, back in grad school. But the data, she reminds herself. It’s worth it, for that. She’ll be cool and professional, and it will be fine. It’s only a week.

When she comes back, Theon’s stood everyone another round—he does like to show off—and after she collects a congratulatory hug from Margaery, she’s waylaid by Pod, her student assistant, who is eager to express his usual earnest admiration and ask a series of questions about her plans for the upcoming field season. Lannister has disappeared, which is a relief. She finishes her drink, quietly, letting the conversation burble around her, and then makes her goodbyes and heads out into the night, pulling her collar up against the cold.

She stops in her tracks halfway to her battered pickup truck. Lannister’s leaning against the hood, hands shoved in the pockets of his flimsy Southern coat. He’s waiting for her.

She looks at his profile, at the lines carved in the air by his nose and cheekbone and jaw. She could cut herself on his edges.

“What do you want?” she says, too tired to pretend at politeness. She doesn’t understand what’s going on here, doesn’t understand anything about the strange, prickly mix of discomfort and magnetism she feels around him.

She’s not the only one too tired to pretend. “Why do you hate my guts?” he asks her, his frustration as visible as his breath in the chill night air.

Because you’re rich and beautiful and gifted, she thinks. Because if anyone else had done what you did, their career would be over, but you got the mother of all second chances. Because it’s not fucking _fair_. Because your face looks like that, in the faded streetlamp light, and I want to touch it.

Aloud, she says, “I don’t hate your guts.” That’s also the truth.

He scoffs, jamming his hands deeper into his pockets. She doesn’t know why the man can’t be bothered to buy a decent pair of gloves.

“I don’t,” she says, a little more sharply this time, like she’s insisting it to herself as well as him. She’s looking at her boots, scuffed at the toes.

Lannister sighs. When she looks up again there’s an oddly penitent look in his eyes. “I know we got off to a rough start,” he says. “But I’d be honored to work with you on this. If you’ll put up with me.”

“Okay,” she tells him. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Although several scholars, including Storm, Tully-Stark, and Velaryon, have delved into the relationship between migratory patterns, environmental change, and material culture in ancient Westeros, there remain extensive gaps in the historical and archaeological record. Several promising sites identified in the Stormlands over the past decade may hold answers to some of the questions raised in a recent article by Swann and Rogare…._

Brienne groans, lifting her hands from the keyboard to shake out the burgeoning cramp in her fingers that’s starting to feel like a physical manifestation of her state of mind. She’d come in this morning geared up for an awkward encounter with Lannister, ready to meet his provocations with a front of cool, unruffled professionalism. But it’s late afternoon already, and he’s nowhere to be seen. She feels strangely deflated, instead of grateful—as if she’d spent the weekend fretting over nothing, and now she’s restless, struggling to focus on the introduction she’s trying to write.

With a sigh, she closes her laptop and abandons her closet-sized excuse for an office, and heads to the kitchenette down the hall in search of caffeine and distraction. It’s quiet, since most of the undergrad assistants are on break this week, and several of the research fellows are attending a conference in Dorne. Marg’s office is empty—she’s probably over in the university archives—and when Brienne risks a quick peek through the small glass window in the door of the archaeometry lab, there’s no sign of Lannister’s presence. While she’s waiting for the kettle to boil, she resentfully wonders what he’s got up to, and scowls in annoyance upon discovering that the only clean mug left in the cabinet is the one with the slogan FREE FOLK DO IT BETTER emblazoned on the side. It feels like everything is conspiring against her today.

The truth is, Brienne’s always happier in the field. Lab work means sitting still. It means small talk with colleagues. It means late nights and required meetings and tedious seminars and bad coffee that’s stewed for too long in the communal pot, which is why she’s fishing a dusty teabag from the canister instead. She likes the solitary, quiet work of reading and writing and poring over her artifacts with patience, unearthing their secrets and assembling their stories. But she’s never felt fully at ease with the social dynamic of it as workplace. She’d tried to be one of the guys at her last position; it hadn’t worked out well. The easy camaraderie she’s often found on digs somehow eludes her once she’s back in an institutional setting, although WRI is as congenial a community as she’s found.

As if to underscore that fact, a head gracefully crowned with auburn braids pops out of a doorway as she’s heading back from the kitchen.

“Ah, Brienne! Can you spare a moment?” She does as she’s bid, detouring into the office and folding her limbs into the too-small chair facing the desk, and smiles at her boss while she tries not to spill tea all over herself.

“I wanted to give you some feedback on your the Highgarden proposal—which is looking excellent so far,” Catelyn says, and proceeds to spend the next ten minutes elegantly tearing it apart, before providing a reassuring array of suggestions on how to stitch it back together. It’s just the kind of thing that leaves some scholars petrified, resentful, or both when it comes to WRI’s director—but Brienne finds Catelyn’s direct style reassuring. You always know where you stand with her.

“And I hear you’ve persuaded Jaime to assist on the technical side of things,” Catelyn adds, and Brienne’s heartbeat stutters.

“Er,” she says. “Well, it wasn’t my idea, but there was a bet—” Brienne’s aware that she’s blushing, and resents it. So much for the smooth, unruffled professional surface. “Anyway, he’s going to give me a week of support with the dating and comp analysis.”

“I’m so glad you’re working together on this,” Catelyn says, intent. “I’d hoped the two of you might find opportunities to collaborate, especially given the fact that you’ve established such promising rapport with some of the other research fellows.”

Except none of the other research fellows have left a colleague for dead, Brienne thinks. “I know,” she says out loud, and pauses. “I’m just—are you sure he’s—that it’s not—a risk, I guess,” she says, the unspoken question fizzling into vapor. Nothing was proven, she reminds herself. But the absence of proof is no guarantee of safety.

Catelyn pins her in place with those remarkable seawater-colored eyes, then, and she squirms. “I trust him,” Catelyn says, firmly. “I wouldn’t have hired him otherwise.”

Brienne feels a flash of shame, as if she’s betrayed her mentor by expressing her doubts.

“Okay,” she says. “Then I’m fine with it.” Catelyn is a generous person, although there’s steel under her warmth. Brienne trusts her, even if she can’t trust everyone Catelyn vouches for, not without verification. But she can fake it, enough to get the job done.

Catelyn smiles, relieved. “I know the two of you haven’t hit it off—and Jaime can be difficult—but he’s genuinely committed to the work, and he’s interested in what you’re doing. And he’s come up with some striking ideas for new technical methods, although they haven’t all succeeded yet.”

Brienne nods, and stands, but as she’s headed for the door Catelyn looks up from her desk. “Oh, by the way—a student of Ned’s stopped by earlier. He was wondering if you’re still looking for volunteers for the Summerhall dig?”

“Sure,” Brienne tells her, then manages to smile for real. “That is, if you can’t spare your entire household.” Catelyn’s husband heads up the Natural Sciences department at the adjacent University of the North, and the two of them are raising a pack of terrifyingly precocious future researchers, two of whom have already somehow cajoled their way into permission to pitch in during Brienne’s upcoming field season.

“Then I’ll send him along,” Catelyn says. “He hasn’t got any formal experience, but he’s clearly intelligent, and looks sturdy enough. And he’s keen.”

“I’ll be here,” Brienne tells her, and makes her escape at last.

Lannister’s not there when she comes in the next morning, but there’s a knock on her door while she’s still sipping on her thermos of coffee.

“Come in,” she says, but when she turns, it’s not Lannister’s lanky frame in the doorway—it’s the dark-haired kid from the bar.

“Um, Dr. Tully-Stark told me to come see you about volunteering,” he says, and that’s how she ends up spending the next half-hour giving Gendry Waters a tour of the institute, interviewing him along the way. She’s quickly won over by his slowburning determination, not to mention to the muscle in his forearms—he won’t find the physical side of fieldwork a challenge. Also, she’s charmed by the way his stolid expression gives way to boyish enthusiasm when she pulls open the drawer of dragonglass blades in one of her storage cabinets.

““I’ve always liked old weapons and stuff. That’s how I ended up with the gig—I was looking for a bartending or dishwashing job to supplement my scholarship, but Tormund hired me to handle the axes instead. Said I looked more reliable, and they split the tips from the bar anyway,” he tells her. “Where are these from?”

“These two are from the southern border of the Crownlands, southwest of Massey’s Hook,” Brienne says, pointing to a spearhead and dagger in turn, “and the rest are from the Stormlands proper. Well, that’s where they were found—the material originates from Dragonstone. It’s one of the trade patterns we’re looking at—how dragonglass was exported around Blackwater Bay and up and down the Narrow Sea, and whether it mostly moved as raw material, or finished tools.”

“Is that what you’re working on?” Gendry asks, eyes still fixed on the shining black stone.

“Partly,” she tells him. “A lot of my work is more interpretive—I’m interested in what material culture can tell us about how people might have related to the landscape. The research falls under the umbrella of the bigger project Catelyn’s leading—she has a five-year, million-dragon grant from the Braavos Foundation to study population movement and environmental change. But we all focus on different things. Sometimes documentary sources—Margaery’s a historian by training; she mostly deals with textual records—and sometimes putting pieces of physical evidence together, and then trying to tell a story about what they mean. You can look at things like the distribution of artifacts, or the context you find them in. And there’s more technical methods, too—like radiocarbon dating, or isotopic analysis of bones.”

“I’m the one who does that part,” a low, amused voice interjects from behind them. Brienne’s hands clench the counter for a moment, before she deliberately relaxes her shoulders and turns. Lannister is leaning in the doorway—arms crossed, sleeves of his faded button-down shirt rolled up; insouciant.

“Dr Lannister,” she says.

“Dr. Tarth,” he replies, with a nod just this side of mocking. “And our young friend from Bury the Hatchet.”

“This is Gendry Waters,” Brienne introduces them. “He’s interested in volunteering for the field school.”

Jaime’s smile is flinty with mischief. “You were that impressed by our axe-throwing skills?”

Gendry shrugs. “Dr. Stark said WRI needed some students. After you two left the other night, I ended up talking with one of your assistants—Podrick?—and it sounded cool, the stuff you’re doing.”

“It is,” Lannister says, and he sounds almost sincere. Brienne isn’t sure what to make of it.

“So you analyze bones?” Gendry asks him.

“Among other things, yes.”

“What for?” His curiosity seems genuine.

“Bone tells you about diet, and diet tells you about place,” Lannister explains, and for a moment his face is is so open she almost forgets she can’t stand him. “And movement, sometimes—you can compare tooth enamel and adult skeletal remains to the mineral signature of the local geology, and see if someone stayed where they grew up, or not.”

Brienne folds her arms and leans back against the counter, and listens to Lannister answer the kid’s questions with a frank and uncondescending generosity. She wishes he’d learn to talk to his colleagues like that. Eventually Gendry mumbles something about being late for class and heads for the door—although not without a “Thanks, Dr. Tarth,” as he goes.

“Collecting strays?” Lannister asks her, as she rewraps the tray of dragonglass artifacts for storage.

“Catelyn suggested him,” Brienne says, shortly.

“I see,” he replies. “Well, I’ve got some stray ends of my own to tie up, but if you bring your stuff over first thing tomorrow, I’ll have everything ready.”

“Great,” she says. “I’ll be there.”

He beats her to the archaeometry lab the next morning, which somehow annoys her even though it’s his territory, properly speaking, not hers. He’s making lazy half-arcs in a spinning desk chair when she arrives with her trays of samples and starts to lay them out.

Do you want me to start on dating a particular group first?” he asks.

“Actually,” she says, “if you can date a few key samples from each layer, that should be sufficient—I can extrapolate the rest from the stratigraphy. What I’d really like help with is compositional analysis on some of the ceramics and metals. Catelyn mentioned you were working on some new methods.”

“Sure,” he says, pushing himself up out of the chair and strolling over. “Got it.”

“I’ve already prepped these for the spectrometer,” she says, indicating the first batch.

Lannister takes the tray. “Nice work,” he says, examining the fragments, as she heads back for the next. She can’t tell if he’s sincere, but then he continues, tone light and conversational: “Always a pleasure to see things done properly. You were in Randyll Tarly’s lab for your doctorate, right?”

“Yeah,” Brienne says.

“He’s a prick.”

She spins around, nettled. “You think I don’t know that?”

Lannister looks a little taken aback, and she realizes just how furious she’d sounded. Time to dial it back, she tells herself. The last thing she needs to do is spill all her baggage in front of this man.

“Sorry,” he says, and then she feels worse.

“It’s fine,” she tells him, although it’s not, really. Just thinking about her doctoral experience still leaves her on edge, and that lingering impact makes her almost as mad as the shit she’d put up with in the first place. “I switched advisors halfway through,” she explains. “His lab was the only one at Bitterbridge with the resources I needed, but my committee ended up being mostly external. I got my diploma, and got out.”

“Good,” he says. “You were wasted on them.”

And she has no idea how to respond to that, so she just gets back to work. Thankfully, the conversation is intermittent—and as coolly professional as she could hope for—over the remainder of the day.

On Friday, though, things get weird. Lannister’s done with the radiocarbon dating, although she hasn’t had time to review all the results. She’d been busy selecting the material that she’s most excited about, the pieces she wants compositional analysis of: pottery sherds and bone fragments, a handful of bits of iron, bronze, and copper, and samples of some lithic scatters, mostly dragonglass and chert. That morning, she’s startled by how interested he seems in the artifacts themselves, almost as spellbound as Gendry had been by the considerably showier blades.

“Beautiful,” he says softly, reaching out a long finger to trace the shape of a sherd, tipping it up and down against the surface so the mica shimmers in the stark florescent light. She can’t help but think the same of him—beautiful, and sharp-edged, something not entirely sound. It sends an uneasy bolt of desire through her, tinged with disgust—although she’s not sure whether that’s aimed at him, for causing it, or her, for feeling it.

‘Anything you can tell me about the mineral composition, and any traces left of the contents it may have held.”

“Got it,” he says, and he’s happily absorbed in his work all day, moving from the microscope to the spectrometer to a host of other machines. She stops by to check at regular intervals.

“Is that everything you’ve prepped so far?” he asks, late that afternoon, and she’s surprised he’s not eager to check out for the weekend. But he’d promised her a week, and he seems to be enjoying himself.

“There’s one more set,” she says. “Some strange outliers. I have a few items with this weird damage signature—probable corrosion, I think, but I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. I was wondering if you might be able to run a couple of them through the spectrometer, see if you can identify what might have caused it.”

“Sure,” he says, looking intrigued. “Hand ‘em over and I’ll have a look.”

“It’s this group here,” she says, sliding the tray out from the shelving along the back wall. “The damage shows a little different on the bone chips and the ceramics, but if you have a look under the microscope you’ll see the similarity.”

“I’m going to go meet Marg for dinner,” she says, after a moment, and feels compelled to add, “you’re welcome to join us.”

“Nah, thanks,” he says, fiddling with the sample he’s preparing. “I’ve got a sandwich in the fridge. Say hi to her for me.”

“Okay,” she says, relieved, and leaves him to it.

When she returns, three hours—and two unplanned glasses of wine—later, fumbling into her office with a vague plan of reviewing some journal articles until it’s safe to drive, the lights in the lab are still on. He’s like a dog with a bone, she thinks, and an uncharacteristic giggle escapes her— _literal bones, hah._ Curiosity propels her through the door before she can think about it, and then all her tipsy mirth drains away.

Lannister is grimly silent. He doesn’t look up when she enters. He’s sitting frozen at the microscope, face drained of color, staring blankly into the distance. His scarred hand grips the edge of the counter like it’s holding him up. Her samples are scattered all over the countertop, all their careful ordering lost.

“What the fuck,” Brienne says, and then feels bad about it, because he looks like he’s a mess. “Are you okay?”

He glances up at her, and the look in his eyes makes her stomach twist.

“This damage isn’t corrosion,” he says, hoarse and unsteady. “It’s persyzine. Wildfire.”


	3. Chapter 3

Brienne stares at her colleague, who is quite possibly entirely out of his mind.

“There’s no historical evidence that wildfire existed,” she says, keeping her voice carefully steady. “Most historians agree it was a myth invented by alchemists to make people believe they could control something as dangerous as dragonfire.”

Lannister opens his fist. A small fragment of bone is nestled in his scarred palm.

“I know what it looks like,” he says, and his voice is dry like grass in late summer, ready to catch flame. “I’ve seen it before.” A shudder goes through him, visible as an earthquake, and he drops the bone onto the countertop with a muted clink, and pushes himself up and away, stumbling past her to the door.

“Lann—Jaime,” she says, and then “wait!” because he’s in no fit state to go anywhere, but she doesn’t know what to _do_ with him. Seven fucking hells, is he having some kind of breakdown? Should she call Catelyn, or ring the emergency number for the Watch? Neither of those options seem fast enough, and _fuck_ , her phone’s still in her backpack—she sprints back to her office to grab it and her coat, and then heads off in pursuit. No one else is here now, and she’s big enough to subdue him if it comes to that. Probably.

The heavy fire-exit door at the end of the hallway is still swinging in slowly diminishing arcs, and she pushes it open and heads out into the night, blinking at the dark until she sees him—huddled up against the side of the building ten meters away, trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. The damp mist hanging in the air isn’t helping, nor is the chill wind.

Brienne approaches slowly. “Let me help,” she says, and he blinks at her, like she’s uttered something incomprehensible. But he lets her take the lighter and cup her hand next to his and hold the flame steady. The faint orange glow makes every line in his face spring into relief; he suddenly seems older than she’s ever perceived him. He can’t be more than thirty-five or so, but he looks all that and more, now. The tip of the cigarette kindles into a steady, glowing ember, and Brienne drops her hands, steps back a little to give him space while he takes a long, desperate drag, and then another. She pockets the lighter.

“Okay,” she says. “You’re a scientist. Explain.”

He takes a deep breath and immediately starts coughing—she guesses he’s not a particularly regular smoker, judging from that mishap and the battered look of the mostly-full packet of Qarth Lights he fishes out of the back pocket of his jeans to offer her. She doesn’t really want one, except there’s something almost courtly about the gesture, and she doesn’t want to break this fragile rapport until she can figure out what’s going on and whether she needs to call for backup. So she lights a cigarette and takes a drag and coughs even harder than he had. That elicits a wild little laugh, which subsides when she glares in response, and fizzes up again as a quiet chuckle when she looks away. He sounds faintly hysterical. At least the second drag doesn’t start her coughing again. She leans agains the wall next to him.

“All right,” he says, when he’s got his breath back under control. “But not here.”

“Back inside?” she says, and he shudders again, shakes his head _no_.

“Okay,” she says, slow and patient, like she’s talking to particularly mulish child. “I need a bottle of water and half an hour before I can drive us anywhere, and I don’t think you should be behind the wheel right now. But we can go sit in my truck.”

Jaime nods, slowly, and takes a last drag from his cigarette before tossing the butt to the ground and grinding it into the damp dirt under his heel. Brienne supposes this is not the time for a lecture about littering, so she follows suit.

He’s shivering. “Here,” she says, pulling off her heavy wool coat. “Put this on before you catch your death.” She’s got a heavy sweater underneath, and he’s freezing in shirtsleeves, and the stupid heater in her ancient truck is slow to get going.

He stares at her for a moment, then complies, moving a little slowly, like he’s still out of it. The coat fits, not that she’s surprised; she’d bought it from the menswear section. It’s a little rude of it to look better on him, though. Even bedraggled and miserable, he’s still probably the most beautiful person she’s ever seen face-to-face.

She leads him to the truck and pops the locks and he climbs into the cab next to her as she starts the engine, and idles there in the parking lot. Brienne doesn’t say anything, just waits, and tries not to think about how much this feels like luring a particularly attractive stray cat to the fireside with scraps of meat, on some dig or another.

A full minute passes, and then he says, “Aerys Targaryen,” his breath puffing out like smoke, and she feels her chest go tight. His advisor. His victim, or so she’s been told. But Jaime doesn’t sound like a murderer now. What does a murderer even sound like, anyway? She’s being ridiculous.

“How?” she asks, and she’s surprised to hear how calm her voice is.

“He was obsessed with wildfire. It started as legitimate research. He’d been interested in the chemical properties of flammable substances—there were potential military and commercial applications, it was easy to get funding for that—and then later he started digging into historical records and meeting with some shady researchers from Astapor. I only got glimpses of it when I was a grad student—I was keeping my head down, focused on my dissertation. But he knew I was interested in applied chemistry, especially for historical forensics and archaeology—I think that’s why he decided to keep me on as a postdoc. And that’s when I started to realize he was…dangerous. Out of control. And then one day he told me wildfire was real, and he knew how to make it.”

Jaime falls silent for a moment, the perfect line of his jaw gone tight under his beard.

“I don’t know how he figured out the formula, but by my last year in the lab, he was manufacturing large quantities in secret. He called it persyzine—that’s the word the Astapori used, although I got the impression that their compound was slightly different, even if it had similar effects. He showed me—things. He was doing experiments with it—on inanimate objects, at first, but then I caught him with live animals—” the shudder goes through him again—“and more. He was making plans to test it on people, I think, by the end. At some hidden prison facility in the Astapori hinterland.”

He’s breathing rapid and shallow, now, and Brienne has to consciously remind herself not to mirror it, to keep her breaths deep and even. She doesn’t doubt for a second that he’s telling the truth. Her reflexive skepticism, even towards her own judgment, has evaporated. There’s no room for it in this enclosed space, growing warmer by the minute.

“I tried to report him,” Jaime continues. “No one listened, or at least, they didn’t act quickly enough. So I confronted him myself, and he—he set the lab on fire. I think—I think he thought I’d die, and he’d just walk through the flames and escape. He’d been taking some kind of strange supplement he believed had made him fireproof—whatever he was using might have added to the mental instability; I’m not sure. His clothes were on fire, and he tried to grab me and push me into it, and I just put my hand out—” He splays his right hand, shoves it at the windshield, and the reflected light catches on the scars—burn scars, Brienne realizes, horrified that she hadn’t seen it before.

“I shoved him into the flames,” Jaime tells her, finally, low and weary. “And then I ran out of the building, and watched to be sure he didn’t escape. I didn’t call for help until it was all over.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” she asks, aghast.

“I did,” he says. “I tried, anyway, at first. But I was pretty out of it—burns and bruises and shock—and the maesters put me under to debride my hand. By the time I woke up, it was too late—my father was there, and the coverup was well underway.” He sounds bizarrely resigned.

“Letting everyone think you blew up the lab and murdered your advisor—or the other way around—is a _coverup_?” Gods, rich people are even madder than she’d thought.

Jaime shrugs. “He didn’t particularly care if it destroyed my academic reputation—all the better, since that just left me without much of an alternative. He expected me to come back and work at LanPharma; that’s what he’d wanted all along. So I did—it felt like an obligation, somehow. I didn’t question it the way I should have—I mean, he expected gratitude; he’d made sure I wasn’t facing manslaughter charges, or worse. So I decided I owed him a decade, and I stuck to that, more or less. Maybe I should have just left—taken my trust fund and pissed off to Essos. But I was dating someone in King’s Landing at the time, and she wasn’t willing to leave. At least it was still research, even if it was mostly purposeless to me. It functioned as a distraction, enough to fill the days. About a year and a half ago, I had my final falling out with my father—things were already over with my ex by then—and decided the decade was up. So here I am.”

“Why here?” she can’t help asking.

“Ned Stark was the first person on the scene that night,” he explains, and Brienne sucks in a breath, the rest of the missing puzzle pieces falling into place. “He and Catelyn were visiting scholars at KLU that year, and his lab was in an adjacent building. He found me before the ambulance got there, and I told him everything. He believed me—he’d been suspicious about Aerys already, I think—and later, after I got out of the hospital, he told me he’d back me up if I wanted to go public. But I couldn’t face it. Before they went back to Winterfell, he called me up and said to get in touch if I ever decided I wanted back into academia someday—as long as I was willing to put up with a cold climate.” He laughs, then, bitterly, and sinks down into the collar of her coat.

“Jaime,” she says, and he turns to her, a tired half-smile tugging at his mouth.

“Not Dr. Lannister?”

Brienne feels her cheeks warming. “I think we’re past that point,” she says, and he laughs again, a little more genuine this time, and nods.

“I owe you an apology,” she says, forcing the words out of her throat. “I made a lot of assumptions based on—flawed data. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Not your fault. I was the one who decided to go along with the coverup, and keep it buried. Ned and Cat offered to reach out and explain to people, privately, when I came, but I told them not to. Too proud, or just stubborn, I guess.”

“She told me she trusted you,” Brienne says. “I should have listened. It’s just—I had some shitty experiences at Bitterbridge, and I guess it’s too easy for me to imagine people doing awful things to their colleagues.” For a moment she considers telling him about the bet, but it suddenly seems very small in comparison to what he’s just shared, and she doesn’t want him to think she’s trivializing that.

Jaime tips his head back. “For what it’s worth, you weren’t wrong about the awful things. Just about who did them. Don’t worry about it. Besides, I was kind of a dick to you when I first got here.” He pauses. “The truth is, I envied you—I’m not making light of the other stuff, like I said, I know what Tarly’s crowd are like—but I wasted a decade tweaking pharmaceutical compounds to crank out profits for my father’s shareholders. Whereas you—you’ve done real work. You’re the kind of scholar I wanted to be before this all happened.”

“Oh,” she says. She feels faintly stunned by this revelation; she has no idea how to respond.

“Also, if we're doing apologies now, I’m sorry for what I said about Renly at the Midwinter party,” he adds. “But for the record, I wasn’t making fun of him for being gay. I was making fun of his taste in men.”

Brienne wonders, momentarily, if this is what whiplash feels like. Her head hurts, and it’s not from the wine. “His _taste_?” she echoes, an edge of suspicion leaking back into her voice.

“On the basis of experience,” he assures her, suddenly overtaken with a reckless cheer that she finds more worrisome than reassuring, under the circumstances. “Loras and I used to get high and make out in the toilets at boarding school.”

Brienne realizes she’s gaping at him, and shuts her mouth a moment too late.

“Oh,” she says again, stupidly. Then she can’t help but envision it: him and Loras, entwined like a pair of particularly tall and handsome flowering vines against a cinder-block wall somewhere, and she’s blushing. That heater is definitely working now.

“He must have told Marg, because she never passes up a chance to tease me,” Jaime adds.

“Does she know?” Brienne asks. “About this?”

He sobers up. “Not the full story, no. I think she trusts that I’m not a vicious killer, and she’s probably gleaned enough to realize Aerys was up to something ugly. Her family moves in those circles, too. But she’s never asked me about it. No one has, actually,” he says, “since that night. Until now.”

“Oh,” Brienne says, for the last time. Then, before she can stop herself: “So. What are we going to do about it?”

Jaime blinks at her for a moment, and then his face goes still as he catches her meaning.

“It would be a huge finding,” she says. “If we could prove it.” Her mind is suddenly racing at a thousand leagues an hour, heedless.

“There’s no way we could hide the source, if you—we—published,” he says, slowly. “We’d have to account for how I knew what I was looking at in the first place, and where the formula came from.”

“I know,” she tells him. “I’m not saying we should—do anything public. Yet. Not unless you change your mind. But I can’t stop looking, now. There might be more traces of that stuff back at the lab. At the _site_ , gods. This could upend half my conclusions. I can’t just leave it alone.”

“I’m not asking you to,” he says. “I just—can you give me some time to think about this? To figure out what to do, and if I want to be part of it. I’ll still help you with the samples—I promised.”

“Only if you’re okay with it,” she says. It’s obvious that he’s uneasy about the idea. “And it’s way too early to think about publication. We don’t have to tell anyone—not even Catelyn. Not yet."

Jaime gives her a tired nod.

“Let me drive you home,” she tells him, and he lets her, and that’s how it begins.

The next Monday he’s at her office door, her coat folded in his hands. She takes it and drops it on her desk, and they get right to work: sorting through all her material—in an oddly comfortable, if occasionally grim—silence, identifying samples for him to test. Sixty-seven other pieces from her Summerhall site register positive for what he’s told her is wildfire.

They start to make a tentative plan for further evidence collection on her next field visit, ways to gather the data without letting anyone else on the team guess what she’s—what _they_ are looking for. Somehow it goes without saying that this is a joint enterprise. Somehow it goes without saying that they’re—friends, now, or something close enough that she can't label it neatly to stick in another drawer.

Brienne never takes the coat to the cleaners. Every time she pulls it on, she catches a dwindling echo of stale cigarette, and under it, something else: his scent, lingering.


	4. Chapter 4

The hill overlooking the ruins of Summerhall is where it all starts to go right.

It’s a gorgeous day, the rolling green hills dappled with the slow-moving shadows of huge puffy clouds—the remnant of some weather system that rolled across the Narrow Sea, a constant and welcome reminder that she’s in the Stormlands. Brienne’s lungs are full of clean air and she’s happy in the way she’s only ever happy when she's like this: outdoors, moving, putting her body and her mind to good use in pursuit of something purposeful. She and Jaime are surveying along the remnants of one of the old footpaths that leads up from the ruins, while the rest of her team is down at the current excavation site. When she glances down she can see the brown patchwork of one-meter gridded squares where they’re patiently scraping through the dirt with trowels, stopping at intervals to record and sketch what they uncover.

This is only the second field season she’s run herself, without the supervision of a more senior researcher. It should be exhausting: with Jaime and Gendry, she’s got two total novices, and everyone save Jaime and herself is under the age of 25. But it’s going remarkably smoothly so far. Pod and Osha, the undergrads, were here with her last time so they mostly know what they’re doing, and Dacey’s almost experienced to run a site on her own; if Brienne didn’t know better, she’d peg her as an advanced doctoral candidate, not someone just finishing up her master’s degree. Sansa’s old enough to be at uni, although she’s technically on a gap year, and Arya may be just seventeen, but—as her mother likes to recall fondly—she’s been digging since she was in diapers.

Brienne had decided to split the month between survey and excavation work—the former along the paths over the hills and in the surrounding countryside, and the latter at a series of small sites along the periphery of the ruined castle. The area where the main structure stood was excavated quite extensively by a major joint venture between the Citadel and The University of the Free Cities a decade and a half ago, although Brienne’s now salivating at the thought of getting a permit to come back and re-excavate it all in a few years, once they have the evidence to make their case. Which will depend, of course, on what she and Jaime decide to do with whatever they find this time.

But she’s not worrying about that now, because her attention is partly occupied by the incredibly distracting sight of Jaime’s ass, snug in a pair of well-worn jeans, as he climbs the steep incline in front of her. She’s supposed to be keeping her eyes on the ground, looking for tell-tale signs and objects to flag so they can enter the data into the handheld GPS. Jaime’s turned out to be remarkably diligent at fieldwork, taking to it with a sort of unforced, astonished delight that she remembers well from her own first time. It had been his idea to come, and he’d been right to suggest it: he may have had no field experience, but he’s clever and good with his hands—well, mostly; it had been hilarious to watch him drop the plumb bob three times in a row as a result of getting tangled in bright string while Podrick patiently instructed him in the art of gridding the first series of test units. But he’d picked up the basic physical skills fast, and the underlying concepts even faster. It makes her wonder what he’d been like as a student; what he might have become then under the mentorship of someone less monstrous than Aerys Targaryen.

She stops to flag a bent horseshoe nail—probably dated after the period she’s interested in, but on the first pass it’s best to record everything—only to hear a shout from the path above her.

“Holy shit, Brienne, look.” He’s breathless, and for a moment she’s worried something is wrong, but then she notices he’s crouching, and pulling a marker flag out of his pack to carefully note the spot where he’s just drawn something from the ground. She comes closer, and sees the dragonglass shining in his palm, the sun catching the wavy pattern of the knapped edge, and the wild joy on his face. And that’s the moment she can no longer pretend her feelings for him aren’t completely out of control.

“Beginner’s luck,” she tells him, and he grins at her and carefully deposits the point in the plastic case in his backpack and they continue onwards. But her thoughts keep straying the way they almost never do when she’s in the field. It’s been a different experience, this time, one marked not only by Jaime’s proximity, but by the odd thrill of keeping a secret from the rest of the crew. Brienne alternates between feeling guilty about the deception, and enjoying the sense of having a private quest: this hidden knowledge is just hers and Jaime’s, right now.

And they’re getting somewhere, she’s sure of it. They’ve come up with coded ways of giving one another a hint when they spot something that looks like it may have what she’s coming to readily recognize, even without a microscope, as the likely signature of wildfire damage. They’re finding a lot of it, and—though she’ll have to wait until she can formally map and analyze the results—in what seems like a pattern of significant density and distribution. Something terrible happened here, deep in the past, its traces now buried roughly a meter under the surface, and now those traces are speaking to them, in a code they have to figure out how to crack, a language that will tell them a new story if they can learn to read it. It’s a heady, marvelous feeling—it’s what she does this for, why she’s been caught up in the romance of archaeology since the day twenty years ago she’d found that first dragonglass point.

However, she’s starting to suspect the rest of the crew have realized something’s going on between her and Jaime, and that they think it’s a rather more literal kind of romance. Sansa is obviously convinced they’re secretly fucking. It’s awkward as hell, because seeing him here every day, the breeze ruffling his hair and the sun picking out the hidden silver in his beard while he’s digging or walking or examining an artifact with those lovely hands, is becoming unbearable. The thing is, she’s pretty sure she’s not the only one feeling it. She keeps catching Jaime’s eyes on her, and he’s open and warm in a way that feels different, even by the standards of the increasing intimacy they'd established while plotting this project back in Winterfell. She’s never been great at reading these signals—she winces at the memory of her cluelessness during the initial stage of her crush on Renly—but she’s fairly certain that Jaime’s not gay, extracurricular activities with Loras notwithstanding. He’s mentioned the ex in King’s Landing once or twice more since that night in her truck, three months ago—always in passing, but always by the pronouns _she_ and _her._ So: swings both ways, she assumes. But _her_ way? That’s the question she's not quite ready to answer.

The next day, she sends Dacey and Osha to pick up the survey where she and Jaime had left off, hoping that her mind will wander less if her body stays put. It doesn’t particularly help, especially since Jaime’s working on a square two meters over, out of neither sight nor mind. She can’t even use it as an opportunity to discuss the covert parts of the project with him, because Arya’s digging next to him, and Sansa’s perched on a stone nearby, carefully sketching the artifacts from her last layer on graph paper.

Brienne’s carefully removing the last two centimeters of dirt above where she expects the burn layer to reveal itself when Gendry comes over from the other end of the site, where he’s working on a new shovel test pit. “Is this a chip of bone, or just a rock that looks like one?” he asks, offering her a small light-colored fragment of something hard.

Brienne rubs it on her sleeve, then presses it to her open mouth, to his surprise—apparently no one’s shown him this trick yet.

“Stone,” she tells him, tossing it to the side. “Dry bone sticks to your tongue—it’s porous.”

“Cool,” Gendry tells her, evidently cheered enough by that information not to be disappointed by his meaningless find.

“I had no idea archaeology involved so much tongue action,” Jaime says, smirking, and Brienne groans.

“I could kill you with this, you know,” she tells him, gesturing with the pointy end of her trowel, and he laughs.

Sansa snorts and shoots her sister an ill-disguised glance, and Arya rolls her eyes. Brienne hopes the reddening sliver of chest exposed by her t-shirt can be plausibly interpreted as sunburn.

After supper that night, they end up around the campfire as usual, drinking bottles of cheap lager and listening to Osha play guitar while Pod sings, cajoling the rest of them to pitch in on the chorus. Until Sansa mentions that the Sunspear University crew that’s been working on a prehistoric site down by the river a leagues and a half away is holding an end-of-season party tonight, and they’ve issued a broad invitation to every research team in the area.

“I can drive us,” says Dacey, whom Brienne trusts to stay sober enough for it.

“I need to download the rest of the GPS data,” Brienne tells them. “But as long as you get back in time—and in good shape—to put in a decent day of work tomorrow, I have no objection.”

“I think I’ll stay here and take it easy,” Jaime announces. Brienne catches another one of those looks passing between Pod and Arya, and before she knows it, the rest of the crew have taken Sansa up on the offer. Arya’s technically under the drinking age in the Stormlands, but seventeen is of age in the North, and anyway, Brienne has decided that—genuinely dangerous stunts aside—what happens in Summerhall stays in Summerhall. Although she’s a little worried about the way Arya’s been eyeing Gendry of late, if only because she’d prefer to avoid the excruciating prospect of being politely interrogated by Catelyn about her youngest daughter’s summer fling. But after everyone else piles into the rental van, and it’s just her and Jaime left sitting by the fire, it’s suddenly and painfully obvious that the youth have deliberately left _them_ unchaperoned—and Brienne doesn’t know what to do next.

“Well,” Jaime says. “You’ve got to give them points for organization, if not subtlety.”

She laughs, but she feels like she’s on the edge of a precipice, dizzy and wanting. Jaime’s eyes are shining in the firelight. She thinks—no, the truth is, she _knows_ —she’s not the only one who wants this. He’s been telegraphing it for weeks. Longer, probably. Brienne is trained in the art of evaluating data and drawing conclusions. The only thing left is to state the thesis out loud.

Jaime smiles, a wry twist at the corner of his lips—gods, she’s staring at his mouth—and then he clears his throat like he’s about to say it and Brienne thinks all in a flash: _no, I want to be the one to make the first move._ Her mouth is too dry to speak, so she lifts her hand and sets it to his face. His beard is softer under her fingers than she’d expected, and his mouth falls open. She can see the pink lining inside his lips. She traces the lower one with her thumb, slowly, and his eyes flutter closed as he exhales. Then she leans into kiss him and he meets her with equal force, the way he always does, whether they’re sparring with words or axes or concepts—or doing this.

Her half-empty bottle tumbles to the ground, pouring beer out onto the dirt as she kisses and kisses him, ravenous, delighted. After a minute, or ten—she’s lost all sense of time—Jaime pulls back for a breath. He’s grinning at her, lips wet and hair wild—did she do that?—and equally breathless. “While I appreciate our temporary state of solitude,” he says, “I think we might want to adjourn to a tent before they come back. Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” she tells him, forcefully, and she’s not sure if she’s talking about the tent or about him, but he helps her bank the fire and then follows her, tangling her hand in his own. As soon as they’re inside she drags him down onto the foam sleeping mat and goes straight for his buttons, undoing them with focused dexterity while his mouth surveys her neck and jaw. He nips at her ear and she hears herself make a sound that’s almost obscene.

“You don’t want to take this slowly?” he murmurs, the tone somewhere between an observation and a question.

“No,” Brienne tells him. “I’m all out of patience with you,” and he laughs.

“Unless—you'd rather go slow,” she says, suddenly uncertain, and whatever’s kindling in his eyes goes from bright to feral.

“ _Fuck_ no,” he says, and then he’s on her, hands moving everywhere, pulling her shirt and sports bra over her head, kissing her collarbone and her breasts, unzipping her jeans and tugging them down her thighs.

Brienne reaches to unbuckles his belt and he stops, all of a sudden, his breath hot against her neck. “Fuck. I don’t have any condoms.”

“I do,” she tells him, and he laughs, sitting up and rocking back on his heels.

“Dr. Tarth. Just how long have you been intending to have your way with me?” His voice is low and smooth and smoky, like good Northern whisky, and it goes to her head twice as fast.

“They’re not _in here_ , you asshole,” she tells him. “Check the supplies crate, the one with the hand soap and the first aid kit. Did you think I was going to bring half a dozen kids out here for four weeks without making sure they could get their hands on protection?”

Jaime laughs again. “I’ll do the honors,” he says. “Since I’m the only one here with trousers on.” The state of his trousers is fully revealing, but she doesn’t mention that before he goes; she just falls back on her sleeping bag and giggles, disbelieving. She’s about to fuck Jaime Lannister in this tent. _Holy shit._

He’s back in under sixty seconds, the moonlight catching the long strip of foil in his hand—ambitious, she thinks, approvingly—and the shine of his teeth. She reaches to take the condoms from him and starts to open one, and he snatches the packet back from her, tossing it aside indignantly.

“Not _yet_ ,” he says, and then he’s kissing her again and hooking his thumbs in her underwear to pull it off and his mouth is headed south and soon Brienne is very, very grateful that their campsite is empty except for the birds, who presumably don’t care what kind of noises she makes. It’s rapidly becoming clear that he’s not just—by far—the most beautiful man she’s ever slept with, but the best at it, too, and it’s honestly unfair for anyone to be so gifted in multiple capacities. But she’s not going to complain about it now. She’s not even sure she’s capable of forming coherent words.

Later, when he rocks inside her, their hips moving in tandem, she runs her hands up and down his shoulders and arms, feeling the smooth tracery of faded burn scars on his skin, and pushes herself up to kiss his forehead, as if she could reach back in time and salve those wounds away.

She wakes up with Jaime tangled around her in her sleeping bag, smiling against the nape of her neck.

“I have a proposal to make,” he whispers to her, quiet so as to delay discovery, although there’s no avoiding the inevitable chorus of teasing amusement that will result when they both emerge from her tent.

Brienne feels herself tense up in his arms.

“Not that,” he says, and then “yet,” and she elbows him in the ribs, listening to him chuckle and hiding her own smile in the pillow.

“About a written proposal, for next year’s Highgarden grant," he continues. "Let’s do it together. For this.” Brienne shifts herself around awkwardly—even half unzipped, the sleeping bag isn’t really big enough for them both—to see his face.

“Are you sure?” she demands. She doesn’t want him to make this leap impulsively, just because they’ve slept together.

“I’m ready,” he says. “Or I will be, by the time the word actually gets out—it will be confidential unless they decide to fund the project, right?”

“Right,” she says, and bites her lip. “Okay. Let’s do it. Once we run through everything we’ve found this time, we’ll have data they can’t ignore."

“On the condition that you take the lead with the actual writing,” Jaime adds.

Brienne frowns at him, indignant, and he says, “I’ll do my fair share of the _work_. But you’re much better at writing things than I am. I’m dyslexic, that's one of the reasons I ended up studying chem in the first place.”

“Oh,” she says, like she always does when she uncovers another piece of him, and Jaime grins.

“That’s why I wanted your help with the draft, back when we made the bet,” he says. “Unfortunately, it turns out you’re also better at throwing axes.”

Brienne smiles. “It’s just as well,” she tells him. “You’re smug enough already; you’d be intolerable if you’d won.”

Jaime leans in to kiss her, soft. “I did, though,” he says against her mouth, and she’s too busy kissing him back to argue the point. All right, she thinks. It’s a victory that they both can claim, together.


End file.
